like, or recite cook-book
recipes. Anything--if you'll only stay!"

Little golden flickers of sunshine came stealing through the branches,
dancing, as the girl talked, on her gown and in her hair. I looked more
than I listened. I had been starved for a sight of her. And my eyes must
have told my thoughts; for a flush crept into her cheeks, and her lashes
fluttered, and she looked not at me, but across the swan-dotted lake
toward the towers of Raincy-la-Tour.

After all there was little that I had not guessed already; but each
detail held its magic, because it was she who spoke. If she had said "I
like oranges and lemons," the statement would have held me spellbound.
I sat raptly gazing while she told me of herself and her sister Enid;
of their life, after the death of their parents, with an aunt whose home
was in Pittsburgh, of their travels; and of a winter at Nice, four years
ago, when the blue of the skies and seas and the whiteness of the sands
and the green of the palms had all seemed created to frame the meeting
and the love affair of Enid Falconer and the young nobleman who was now
known to the world as the Firefly of France.

Their marriage had proved an ideal one, as happy as it was brilliant.
Esme, thereafter had spent half her time in Europe with her sister, half
in America with her aunt, who was growing old. Then had come the war. At
first it had covered the duke with laurels. But a certain dark day had
brought a cable from the duchess, telling of his disappearance and the
suspicion that surrounded it; and Esme, despite her aunt's entreaties,
had promptly taken passage on the next ship that sailed.

"I had meant to go within a month, as a Red Cross nurse," she told me.
"I had my passport, and I had taken a course. Well, I came on to New
York and spent the night there. Aunt Alice telegraphed to her lawyer,
the dearest, primmest old fellow, and he dined with me, protesting all
the time against my sailing. I saw you in the St. Ives restaurant. Did
you see us?"

"Let me think." I pretended to rack my brains. "I believe I do recall
something, in a hazy sort of way. You had on a rose-colored gown that
was distinctly wonderful, and when we tracked the German to the door of
your room, you were wearing an evening coat, bright blue. But the main
thing was your hair!" Here I became lyric. "An oak-leaf in the sunlight,
Miss Falconer! Threads of gold!"

But she ignored me, very properly, and shifted the scene from